


Beth-centric 750 words gone wild

by orphan_account



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, No Ending, PWP, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 04:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2494721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Putting one foot in front of the other was all Beth could do.<br/>She was hungry, thirsty, tired and scared.<br/>More than that, she was alone.<br/>- -<br/>Beth escapes her captors and finds herself alone. Takes places around s05e02.<br/>We all know Daryl's looking for Beth. Well, Beth ain't no lady in distress either, and she's looking for Daryl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beth-centric 750 words gone wild

**Author's Note:**

> * This started out as my daily 750 words and got a little out of hand. I might continue it if I got the time, or use this fic as a place to gather my TWD drabbles/short stories.  
> * And yes the character of Alice is basically me, I like Beth and I like imagining what we'd talk about if we met.  
> (which would probably be Daryl)  
> * English is not my mother tongue

Putting one foot in front of the other was all Beth could do.  
She was hungry, thirsty, tired and scared.  
More than that, she was alone.  
Unarmed but for the knife she clenched in her fist.  
The blood on her clothes had dried, but the sun that had shone since the sunrise made her smell like roadkill.  
When they had escaped the prison, Daryl and her had stuck to the woods. Safer that way. Less likely to run into people. People were the real danger, she had learned. Oh yes, she had to watch out for walkers. But the walkers didn't watch out for her. People did. People watched, plotted, planned, acted. lIied. Hurt. Manipulated.  
People killed.  
So she knew that, for safety reasons, she should have stuck to the woods. But she couldn't. Too tired. Too weak. She couldn't lift her feet to climb over branches and logs or crawl in the bramble. It was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other. So she followed the road north.  
She hadn't seen a walker close since she's escaped. Some in the distance, but nothing to be afraid of. She wasn't sure she could fight one.  
There was a river somewhere to her right. She could hear and smell it, but she'd have to go through the woods to reach it, and that meant she could trip, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to get back up.  
Buildings in the distance. A town. Maybe a bridge or an embankement where she could reach the water safely.  
One foot in front of the other.  
Even her brains seemed to work slowly. One thought after another. Short shadow. The sun hitting hard. Must be noon.  
Town. Food, maybe. But everything had been searched. Had to look... where people hadn't. Where?  
The woods on either side of the road cleared a little and Beth got closer to the first building, a large, abandoned white factory on the other side of a set of railtracks. From the looks of it, it had been abandoned for longer than the... whatever was going on. Infection. End of the world. Apocalypse.  
She didn't care. No water or food. Or...  
Her brains caught up with what she was seeing. It was an abandoned mill and the river must be right behind it. She walked faster, almost jogging, over the railroad, past the mill, along a fence, until a shallow pool of dark green water. Before she realized it, she was on her knees, sipping the tepid water. It tasted like algae. It was wonderful. After half a minute, her brains caught up once more and she told herself that she should drink from running water instead. She stood up and wiped her face. She'd been careless. A walker could have walked up to her while she was drinking and she wouldn't have noticed until it was too late.  
She spinned slowly, examining her surroundings. East of her, the river, with a dam and small rapids. North, past the mill's car park, the rail tracks and a dirt road. West, the town itself, which seemed to center along the road she'd come from.  
South... South, she wasn't going back.  
Not a soul in sight. She drank from the river and rinsed her tee-shirt. She found an intact, empty beer bottle that she filled. She had nothing to use as a stopper, so she kept it upright in her left hand. Maybe in town she'd find a proper bottle.  
She traced her steps back to the main street, but what she saw stopped her in her tracks.  
The unmistakeable silouhette of a walker feeding on a person, about a hundred yard in front of us. It was crouched over a body lying on the sidewalk.  
Beth clenched her knife tighter, took a good look around. Just the one. It was too busy to notice her coming closer. One blow to the head. Then she could look at the victim. Maybe they had something that could be useful to her.  
The image of Daryl lying on the sidewalk flashed in front of her for a second, but she shook it off. Daryl wouldn't be caught unaware by a walker.  
 _You'll be the last man standing._  
She crept closer and was startled by a blur. A dog came running at her from a garden, barking violently and baring his teeth. Beth saw the walker turn around, but she kept her eyes and the dog, who was growling at her from less than 6 feet. She lifted her knife, ready to defend herself, while at the same time she felt fear crawl through her belly. She hadn't been prepared for that.  
"Legion!" a woman yelled, "Down! Legion, you can see she's not dead for Chris' sake!"  
A young woman - the woman she'd mistaken for a walker, Beth realized - ran towards them, holding a knife too.  
"Legion, will you stop! Don't worry, she's not gonna hurt you--" The woman grabbed the dog's collar and slapped her on the rump. The dog was still growling and pulling towards Beth. "--I hope." the woman muttered as she sheathed her knife. "She's a guard dog at heart, she's just trying to defend me."  
The mongrel seemed to realize that her owner wasn't at risk and stopped all sign of hostility as suddendly as she'd started. When the woman let go of the collar, the dog wandered away, sniffing at the sidewalk.  
Both women stared at each other. The dog owner was a little older than Beth but not by much, she can't have been much older than Maggie. She was bigger than Beth though - taller and larger, and cleaner too, Beth couldn't help but notice. She had unnaturally bright red hair with a few inches of brown roots.  
"You okay?" the woman asked with a quizzical look.  
"Uh? Sorry, yeah, I mean, I didn't mean to... to catch you by surprise. When I saw you over there, I thought you were a walker." Beth pointed at the body, because she'd been right about that, at least. That was a body lying there on the sidewalk.  
The woman looked in that direction and nodded in comprehension. "You thought I was eating it or something?" she started toward the body and signalled to Beth to follow with a jerk of her head. "Not, _that_ was the biter. I was butchering it. I didn't kill it. I mean, I did, but it was already dead."  
She stopped and raised her hands defensively. "What I'm trying to say is, I'm not a murderer. This was a biter, I only put it out of its misery."  
When Beth got closer to the body, there was no doubt that it was a biter, if a fresh one, but that wasn't what was bothering her.  
"You shouldn't turn your back to me," she told the woman.  
"Uh?"  
"I could have stabbed you, or something."  
"Honey, you look like you weigh 100 pounds wet. Plus I've got Legion." She gave Beth a once-over. "But you're right, I guess. I couldn't have stopped you." She rubbed her chin pensively. "I tend to forget to be scared of people. Biters, they're always on my mind, but not people. You don't see many people 'round here."  
She had an accent Beth couldn't place. She bent over the body, which had his--its--pants down, and, with her knife, finished cutting of a piece of meat from the thigh, which she threw at the dog. Beth felt slightly disgusted and wobbled on her feet.  
"You sure you okay, honey? You look like you're going to faint."  
"I'm hungry, is all." Maybe the woman'd think the sight of the walker made her hungry. She didn't care.  
"When was the last time you ate?"  
Beth concentrated. She'd walked all day yesterday and half the day before. She'd chewed on grass and flowers, but that didn't count as eating, right?  
"Day before yesterday."  
The woman straightened up.  
"Should have said it earlier. Let's get us to the café. There's some hazelnuts roasting." She pointed to the end of the street with her elbow. "The biter can wait."  
Beth hesitated. It could be a trap, but she had an advantage - the woman hadn't been expecting her. And she was starving. The lack of glucose made her brain slow - and the rest of her body too. She stumbled after the woman, who cast her a worried look.  
"Name's Alice."  
"Elizabeth." It felt safer, somehow, to give a name nobody used to refer to her.  
"Mind if I call you Ellie? That's quite a mouthful."  
"That's what everybody calls me."  
There was a time she couldn't lie. Her father had always been able to see through her lies.  
Alice led her to a small shingled café. There were tables set out on the terrace and a barbecue with a metal box from which a lovely smell was coming. It reminded her of... something, but the name escaped her, until...  
"Nutella."  
"Pardon?"  
"It smells like Nutella," Beth explained with a gesture towards the box. "I've only had it once."  
Alice wrapped her hands in a towel, lifted the box off the grill and put it down on a table. "Well, I'm afraid I've run out of Ella, but if you wait for it to cool down, you should be able to have some nuts."  
Beth collapsed in a chair, so tired, so relieved. A place to sit. Food to eat.  
 _Don't let your guard down_ , she heard Daryl tell her.  
So she didn't. She'd learned from her mistakes.  
Alice sat at the table opposite her and pulled her messenger bag on the table. Beth stiffened, but the woman didn't pull out a weapon like she'd feared, but two eggs. Two beautiful, peach colored eggs that made her mouth water. She was just that desperate.  
"You can have my hard-boiled eggs, but I'm afraid that's all I have to eat."  
Beth was already peeling one before Alice finished her sentence. The woman watched her barf it down with a smile and got up to busy herself with the hazelnuts. The dog came close and sniffed at Beth.  
When she'd finished her first egg, Beth felt like she was thinking more clearly already. It was probably an illusion, but she felt more composed. Composed enough to ask,  
"Is it really alright if I eat them both?"  
"Look, Ellie, just eat. I don't need another corpse on my arms. I've just met you, I don't want to have to put you down because you starved in front of me. Not on my watch."  
So she ate. When the roasted hazelnuts had cooled, they both ate from the box, but she could see that Alice picked only one for every three she did. She was past caring. She was safe, fed and hydrated. For the moment.  
Then she phased out. She didn't know how long, but when she looked up, Alice was leaning back in her chair, eyeing her out. A cloud was providing a blessed interlude of shade.  
"Shit," she let out.  
"Don't worry, I kept watch while you were sleeping."  
"I fell _asleep_? Shit, I can't afford to do that."  
"I was watching."  
"I don't know you!" she squeaked. She cleared her throat. "Sorry about that, but that's what it comes down too. I can't trust a stranger with my life."  
"What happened to you?" Alice asked.  
Beth didn't answer immediately. _You want the long list?_ she thought. What had happened to her? Where should she start? _Why should I tell you anything?_  
"Because you won't have me believe that you've been surviving on your own for two years with just a knife and a beer bottle for a canteen," Alice went on. "Did someone rob you? Did you escape from one of those crazy communities? Were you separated from your group?"  
Beth couldn't hold back a snicker.  
"What did I say?"  
"All of the above?"  
"What? Oh, I get it. Ok." Alice crossed her arms on her belly. She had some fat to spare, Beth thought. How did she do it?  
"Is it your blood?" Alice asked, with a motion of her chin towards Beth's clothes.  
She looked down at herself. Her tee-shirt still had those tell-tale marks of diluted blood, and she hadn't washed her jeans at all.  
"No," she answered.  
"Did they deserve it?"  
"Yeah."  
"Did you give them what they deserved?"  
Something passed between them. "I had to be quick. So, I guess no. No what I wanted, anyway," Beth said.  
"It's a fucked up world. That's why I don't do communities. Too many people, it's like, you know, the allegory, one rotten apple spoils the bunch. I don't get this shit. If there's one occasion to band together and rebuild society, you know, you'd think it'd be now." She laughed too. "It's funny cause, you don't know, but I used to be the biggest cynic around. And here I am preaching peace and love." She looked around. "I'd kill for a beer. Or a cup of coffee. Not literally kill, mind you, but this is the kind of conversation that should take place around a drink."  
Beth nodded. She felt exhausted all of a sudden.  
"What are you gonna do now, Ellie? You got somewhere to go?"  
"I don't know. I have to find my friend. We were... we were at a mortuary."  
"Far from here?"  
"I don't know! I don't even know where we are! I don't even know where we were! There was a bunch of walkers, and I had hurt my ankle, so Daryl tried to hold them back, and I made my way out, but some car stopped and they dragged me in and..."  
She had to stop to catch her breath. She realized she was crying.  
"Could he make it, on his own? Realistically?"  
That stopped Beth's crying. "You don't know Daryl. If there was only one survivor at the end of all this, it'd be him."  
"Alright. Just checkin'. Wouldn't want to waste our time on someone who's sure to be dead. How come you don't know where you were staying?"  
"We were just passing through. We were walking through the woods when we came upon the mortuary, and we spent a night there. We were attacked the second night."  
"I see."  
"No you don't! Even if I knew where we were, he's not there any more. He woudn't stay there, he'd come looking after me. And he don't know where I am."


End file.
